


Nine Lives

by Dogberry



Category: Charlie's Angels (Movies)
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I'm terrible with happy endings so here's an open one instead, Implied Sexual Content, Not exactly romance because I don't know how, Pseudo domesticity, Relationship breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 04:58:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10268795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dogberry/pseuds/Dogberry
Summary: This is not a love story, this is slow dancing in a burning room.





	

**NINE LIVES**

 

1.

Seven twenty-three AM. **  
**

The morning coffee is spitefully hot and nips against his thin lips, but the saucer is back in its place with nary a spill, for he is immaculate as he is still.

Hands: they are hers and mildly calloused, bursting with heart and sliding alongside a canvas of pinstripes that is his waist.

Good morning, a murmur.

It is a theatre of the domestic, what with the curtains heralding a breezy sky, and the saucepan in her sink with gristle on it. The eggs bask sunny side up; and there’s toast, so neatly spread it is almost discomfiting to swallow. It is like this, mostly – boys have always made breakfast for her; she makes love to them, although not in return. Off hand, she recalls the sweet Chad and his overcooked bacon, but shakes it aside. She's with a gentleman of danger now.

Now, his senses take residence in her hair. A rough tug of her forearm and she half-tumbles onto his sitting form, his knuckles grazing her hips, her cheek scraping against his faintly bared teeth. This is his way of greeting.

She withdraws.

It is the phone. He regards it as a nuisance, a meddlesome object. She scoots past the table, knocking his newspaper onto the floor in her haste. He frowns but she doesn’t see.

-Hello, I'll be right there.

It takes her a little less than two minutes to paint a smile on her lips. Keys snug in the pocket of her jeans, she makes for the garage.

He mutely retrieves his paper from the kitchen floor and shovels the lettuce into his mouth with a vengeance.

 

* * *

 

2.  
  
Natalie is casual assortment of broad grins and unsuspecting flair. Dylan loves her in those off-white sandals and loose pedal pushers, the way her buoyancy unrolls and soothes itself into any given atmosphere like a pleasant spray.

Alex is the last to enter, her arms occupied with a basket of oven-made delicacies, although her friends insist that "delicacy" is a subjective term.

There are giggles, a shove or three, and an indignant elbow connects mischievously with her ribs as crumbs explode and scatter over the upholstery. Natalie's endless limbs flay across her lap as they struggle to dodge Alex's culinary efforts.

- _Revenge of the Chinese Fighting Muffin!_

Twice now, the door swings open, and space is happily created on the couch.

- _Bosley!_

-Lookin' fabulous, Angels.

-Thank you, Bosley. Saccharine and unanimous, legs cross over legs as professionalism takes over in the form of a speaker box.

-Good morning, Charlie.

Rustle of files, the pointless arrangement her wrinkled shirt. She has slept in the past night's clothes again, much to his chagrin. He was the one who took meticulousness into his altar, and she had little respect for religion.

With the briefing dispensed, they spring from their seats, buckling gears and tightening laces with a flourish; and once again the Angels are ready to save the world.

 

* * *

 

 

3.  
  
Mid-day. She streaks past the melting trees, one backdrop at a time. He waits, the back of his palm holding his proud chin in place. Cadaverous and imposing, he gathers the afternoon in a self-fashioned control, the base of his neck tense and sharp.

He is sharp all around, a hard-backed gallery of protuberances. Her round face looms into view, and a set of car keys skittle across the coffee table.

-I'm home.

It is unnecessary, but she says it anyway, as if this superfluous act makes up for his unyielding quiet.

(sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here silent all these years)

 

* * *

 

 

4.  
  
Laid out in soft diagonals and pinned by the bilious glare of a lamp, his eyes skirt the arc of her throat, the clasp of her breath as it tightens and sags like a contemporary rhythm, lacking of connection.

-Oh, oh.

It is not definable by music, but she draws back a scream, failing to echo his own as they twist and wrangle into bedsheets of an ill-matched lilac.

Their teeth clink fiercely, his palms flatten on the raging brink of her pulse. In a dream she is the one who drags him, away from his sordid history and capsized thrones, telling him that anything is.

Nightly he splits her open from the juncture of her thighs, while she tries to ignore her burning scalp and how his hands press purple into the skin beneath her breasts.

 

* * *

 

 

5.

  
Sometimes they bathe together. She leans into his mouth as soap suds tilts over the bathtub, her hair like petulant fronds on clammy flesh. He sniffs gingerly at a cigarette and waits for Beethoven's Ninth to unwind from the living room. She does not smoke, but mentally paints for herself a deck of ghosts, and songs from the past.

He strictly discourages her ruminating; it soils both his mood and hers.

The water hangs at her waist and he is behind her, both legs spread around her own. His head slants in a picturesque degree that allows for him to lick impassively at the veins on her neck. They push against the sopping tiles, and he fills her blood with thick languor.

It is always quiet, the thrashing and sucking. He shudders with so much restraint, she barely notices he comes. There is a hint of fright in his eyes as he leaves, and she is mildly chagrined to find the rain beating against the windowpane like a spoilt child.

 

(and I knew then it would be a lifelong thing but I didn't know that we - we could break a silver lining)

 

* * *

 

  
6.

  
-I can't handle this.

-Oh gods, I can't.

 

* * *

 

 

7.  
  
One, two.

He dodges neither boot, but they determinedly fail their mark. It is so masterful, this art of stationary being, that he appears to have suspended the motion of clocks.

Her lips, red of a wild thrush's breast, unclose with a howl. Her arm snaps forwards with each object she hurls at him – a hurricane of picture frames, potpourri bowls and her prized lighter. She gulps, lost and defeated in a test of loyalty, shutting the sliding door so hard that one of the panels sports a crack.

-Just say something, you stupid fuck,  _say SOMETHING_!

He does not. He finds her bemusingly petty, but fears that this humour will one day sour like congealing milk.

-It's too noisy here for the both of us.

-Get out.

He complies, stepping nimbly over the harried mess on the floor, and over the strewn crowns in the platitudes of her mind.

 

(is there room in my heart for you to follow your heart and not need more blood from the tip of your star)

 

* * *

8.

  
It is a tepid Wednesday when she shows up in his bathroom, vomit lining the toilet seat and the sides of her arms.

His stoicism is harrowing, rehearsed, and hones her temper like a stick to a caged beast. Firstly, methodically, he wets a bunch of tissue paper and swabs politely at the filth.

Afterwards, he undresses her like a routine. They do not kiss, even when he brusquely sits her at the edge of the sink and fucks her. He speaks to her of the worldly and murderous and she can only hear him with sleeping ears.

His hysteria is deadening, and their breathing flounders, senses anxiously crutching an intangible vow as he rips shrewdly at her hair.

Faster, madder.

She bleeds a little; he is startlingly heedless. They spend the rest of the evening in suffocating silence, her body sticking feebly to his slow heaving chest.

(some boy you are, to wear my colour red- to wear it very proudly)

 

* * *

 

 

9.

Dylan Sanders does not like Mondays. She feels a dark pressure on the sides of her temples, a migraine.

When he steps into the room she wrenches the medallion off her neck so that it leaves an obscene red welt, and flings it at him. This time, he has the courtesy to flinch. She observes his behaviour with hollow satisfaction.

-I'm leaving.

What he does next is trademark and redolent, so that she is the one that cries. The cigarette is pinched between pallid fingers –squeezed like a rodent under the cruel mill of tyres – and flung onto the ground with violent relish.

His eyes are a multitude of seas at once, gelid and furious.

-You can't give me my life back- She chokes, looking unkempt and indignant all at once, wishing he were dead.

-I hate you. Her voice is bereft of conviction, her hands outstretched and horribly misplaced, as if locked in a travesty of supplication.

She gathers her clothes, collects her fortuities and the castles that were stretched so meanly over a series of air; but leaves the lighter behind for luck, she says.

 

 

Two years, and the blemishes on his sword have wielded a more austere shade. Two years, and he lights a cigarette, ever so artfully, wondering if the red-haired Angel was going to take her soul back.

 

 

**FIN**

Lyrics in parentheses by Tori Amos.


End file.
